


oh what a place to call home

by spacenarwhal



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kid Fic, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 10:24:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18798448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: “Come to Tarth.” Ser Brienne said, her scarred face grave, the memory of the battlefield still playing out in her eyes. They’d scarcely spoken more than a passing word since the fighting had come to an end. She couldn’t bare to look at him, he thought, and the image of her, shrunken and heartbroken, was seared on his sullen heart, scarred and battered as it was, there’d been fresh flesh enough left over to be devoted wholly to that single injury.“I don’t come alone, Ser.” He said, nodding down at the babe sleeping in the narrow cot—nothing like the splendid cradle crafted for Joffrey before he was born, gilded gold and decorated with lions and stags.“Then I take him under my protection also.” Brienne swore, and Jaime knew he could trust her and the power of her word. “No harm will befall him in my house that I can prevent and no wrong go unpunished where I can avenge him.”Knights and lords had made vows of lesser conviction to both his crowned sons, and Jaime’s eyes burned, his throat ached.





	oh what a place to call home

**Author's Note:**

> This is seriously the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written and if you've ever read anything by me, you know that's saying something. 
> 
> I had to get this out before tomorrow night.

The boy came early. Too soon for the world, the midwife said, holding the wrinkled, squalling thing with the same indifference Jaime had seen farmers handle clucking hens being gathered for market. _I’m afraid he won’t last long_ , and Jaime heard the warning in her words, _don’t get attached_.

He’d never seen any of his children born, and the same held true for him, the goaler had not sent for him until the apparent could not be denied, until she was already gone and the babe seemed soon to follow. Yet he was the first he’d ever been allowed to hold, the midwife passing him over to Jaime who felt hopeless, one-handed and off-kilter, afraid as he’d never been before, not even with the dead charging forward or dragon fire spilling from the sky.

-

Against all odds the babe survived the night, and the day that followed, suckling from a milk-damp rag because he couldn’t clamp properly onto a wet nurse.

Then he lived out the week and then the sennight, to the surprise of all.  “Won’t you name him now,” Tyrion asked, half his face still that of a stranger, a mangled twist of angry red flesh, raised and blistered from the fire that claimed half the city. It had sealed his bright green eye closed forever, so only the dark black eye remained and it was that eye that looked over his only surviving nephew with something like pity.

“Me?” Jaime asked, caught like a dullard by the question.

“You’ve spent every second of the day with him. Not to mention you _are_ his father. If anyone should choose his name it ought to be you.” Even if it was only to inscribe upon a grave stone, went unsaid. 

And Jaime, who had only ever been given the opportunity to name a sword, looked down upon his son, fragile and new, more a lamb than a lion, and said, “Arthur. His name is Arthur.”

“A name fit for a knight.” Tyrion answered, his scars twisting as he attempted to grin, though there was no joy in his gaze.

Jaime stared at his son, his son, his very own son who would bare the name Lannister after his father, whatever it was worth, who would know Jaime was his and that he was Jaime’s, and thought to himself, _the name of a good man_.

-

By the time Arthur was a full month old it became clear to Jaime that the Westerlands were not the place he could raise his son. What lion could be safe in the South while the memory of the Mad Queen survived.  Men and women hissed Kingslayer at his back still, but it was the stares full of revile and the blunt tipped arrows of _bastard_ thrown at Arthur that wounded Jaime most. He’d played no part in his parents’ mistakes, he wanted to say, spare him your fury. But his tongue for once went still inside his mouth. Cleverness would only stroke their ire.

But the truth was that there was no where for him to go. King’s Landing half in ruins and the North’s roads barred to him, Lady Stark’s protection withdrawn when he’d left her house like a thief in the night, Casterly Rock a heap of cold stone atop empty mines. His house was nothing it had once been, and it was only his brother’s loyalty that stayed the Dragon Queen’s fury, the name Lannister lived on in word only.

He stared at Arthur, small and helpless, reliant on Jaime for his very survival and thought that if he were a better man the beauty of calling him Lannister would be less in light of that fact. But if this child and his name was all he could have—it was already more than Jaime had earned in his miserable life.

He went to Tyrion. “You could go to Essos.” He said, though his frown gave away how little he thought of the suggestion. Neither of them were under any illusions about the prospects of a one-handed sellsword.

“I will keep thinking. Surely we are not wholly without friends.” His brother said, though there was little hope in his voice when he said it. 

-

Salvation came from where it was least expected but such had been the truth of Jaime’s life for years now. He would cease to be amazed one day.

“Come to Tarth.” Ser Brienne said, her scarred face grave, the memory of the battlefield still playing out in her eyes. They’d scarcely spoken more than a passing word since the fighting had come to an end. She couldn’t bare to look at him, he thought, and the image of her, shrunken and heartbroken, was seared on his sullen heart, scarred and battered as it was, there’d been fresh flesh enough left over to be devoted wholly to that single injury.

She could have ignored him for the rest of her life, could have spit in his face and called him honorless and he would deserve no less than her scorn, but instead she stood before him, tall and noble, the living image of a true knight with a ruby-eyed lion still hanging at her hip. No song would ever do her justice.

“Forgive me, Ser, I don’t—”

“Lady Sansa placed you under my protection. She has bid me return to my home for the time being, to help my father and see to the governing of the lands. But she has not turned you out from my protection, ser.”

She spoke with the same even temperament as ever, and Jaime thought of her pale skin flushed with firelight, the column of her throat and the strength of her thighs, the width of her rough hands and scar-speckled fingers. Her freckled shoulders. There was nothing fine about her, no physical beauty but what fondness found in the crooked line of her teeth, the thrice-healed bridge of her nose. The singular heart that beat beneath her bones, her unfailing conviction in what was right.

No, all the minstrels in the land could write a hundred songs for a hundred years and never capture the living heart of her. Or how horribly he’d failed her.

“I don’t come alone, Ser.” He said, nodding down at the babe sleeping in the narrow cot—nothing like the splendid cradle crafted for Joffery before he was born, gilded gold and decorated with lions and stags.

“Then I take him under my protection also.” Brienne swore, and Jaime knew he could trust her and the power of her word. “No harm will befall him in my house that I can prevent and no wrong go unpunished where I can avenge him.”

Knights and lords had made vows of lesser conviction to both his crowned sons, and Jaime’s eyes burned, his throat ached.

“I’m sorry.” He said, words he’d never spoken before, not when he found her in the camp outside King’s Landing, not when he saw her in the throne room amid the chaos of the new reign. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Jaime,” she said, abrupt and sharp, but when he met her eyes they were softer than he expected, the warmth of Winterfell’s hearth shining bright in their depths.

 “Later.” She said only once, his lady and knight and protector, “Once we’re home. Tell me then.”

And for the first time since he’d taken the King’s Road south, Jaime truly believed that Spring would follow.   

-

Their first night in Tarth there was a feast held in Brienne’s honor, for the people of Tarth seemed to care little that their lord’s daughter came back to them with a one-handed knight and a babe in arms.

Lord Selwyn proved a doting father, raining praise on Brienne’s name and deeds, his voice booming out to the crowded hall. He boasted a number of times that he welcomed back his daughter, victorious in arms, a true knight of the Seven Kingdoms and Brienne flushed red under the attention but Jaime raised his cup to her a dozen times, each time more and more certain that it was still less than she deserved.  

He was careful not to refill his goblet too greedily for already he knew Arthur would cry in the night, and that he would need his wits about him to fetch the wet nurse who had made the journey from the mainland with him, and then there would be need to sit with Arthur while he fussed himself back to sleep.

Brienne glowed in the torch light, her pale hair nearly golden, her scarred faced transformed with happiness Jaime had seen only a few times before.

(He used to make her laugh, behind the closed doors of her chamber back North, it was his greatest undertaking in life to tease her until she let loose her unrestrained mirth, unrestrained and unrefined as all the rest of her.)

She told her father how Jaime had served alongside her in the North during the Long Night, how he’d fought tirelessly though all seemed lost and Jaime wished he had the excuse of draining his cup to avoid her father’s too-knowing stare.

“And were you able to beat my daughter in combat, Ser Jaime?” Lord Selwyn asked under the roar of the hall. He had not yet asked about Arthur or his mother or why Brienne had brought a Kingslayer and his bastard under his roof. Perhaps he could guess. Surely even so far removed from the mainlands, the Lord of Tarth knew about the shame of House Lannister.

“Never my lord,” Jaime answered, feeling like a boy of less than sixteen summers as he did, “so I gave her armor and a sword and swore to fight beneath her if she would have a winter soldier under her command.”

Lord Selwyn’s shrewd eyes cut Jaime to the quick, made him long for his armor and a sword at his side, though he’d not carried one since they’d departed King’s Landing.

“You seem a wiser man than most.”

_The things we do for love_ , Jaime thought, and laughed into his cup as he drained it.

-

The rooms they’d been appointed were not opulent—there was little opulence to be had on Tarth it seemed. Tywin had once called it a glorified fishing village and Jaime would have been inclined to agree a few years ago. Now there was something comforting about a place with purpose—but they were comfortable and well provided. There’d been some conversation about whether Jaime wouldn’t prefer to have Arthur quartered with Genny his milk nurse, but he’d refused quickly. His son had been near him almost from the moment he was born, Jaime couldn’t bear the thought of being so far from him now.

So now there was a sturdy cot in the corner of his chamber, and Arthur sleeping there when Jaime returned from the feasting halls. The servant girl who’d been tasked with looking after him informed Jaime that he’d suckled and been sleeping soundly since, before taking her leave.   

He sat at the hearthside, staring at his son’s round face, the round end of his nose, the fine golden hair on his head. He looked every bit a Lannister Lion, and he wondered what she would have thought of him, how many she would have killed to have placed a gilded crown on his head.

Jaime would tell Arthur one day of his siblings, about beautiful Marcella and soft-hearted Tommen. Even Joffery, cruel though he was, Jaime would tell him the truth of their house.

There was a knock at the door, breaking Jaime free of his thoughts. Arthur stirred, but didn’t wake and Jaime rose from his seat, opened the door to find Ser Brienne on the other side.

“I hope I haven’t disturbed you.” She said, as though he weren’t the guest in her house.

He told her as much and she didn’t argue with him. He stepped aside and she entered, going over to the empty chair by the fire. They’d been alone plenty of times aboard the ship that brought them to Tarth, but this was the first they’d been together without company since they’d disembarked, the first time they’d been alone behind the closed doors of a proper room since Winterfell.

Arthur slept on unbothered. Jaime envied him.

Jaime wished he had wine to offer her but there wasn’t a drop in the room, he simply took the seat beside hers and settled into the silence.

“Have you come to collect your apology?” Jaime asked, looking down at his wooden hand, still attached at wrist.

Brienne neither flushed nor faltered, merely inclined her head towards Jaime as though waiting for him to continue.

She had no time for double-speak or games, and disconcerting though it had been when they’d first met, Jaime loved her for it now.

“I am sorry.” He said, knowing all the while that it could not be so simple. “You were honor bound to the Stark girls, I knew you’d never leave Winterfell. And,” he stopped, fear touching his heart for the first time. “I knew I couldn’t save her, that I would die trying to stop her from doing something terrible—but I told myself that if I could save you, if I could ensure you’d remain safe in the North—then it was a price worth paying.”

It seemed so long ago already, though it hadn’t been a year yet. Two queens and their armies, standing off across a battlefield strewn with bodies, a city of civilians lying in wait between.

They’d taken the city not long after, half of it crumbled to ash, and his sister captured by Jon Snow’s bannermen before either his queen or his sister could get to her. Tyrion had begged clemency, not for her but for the child she carried, swore before his Dragon Queen from his sick bed with poultice covering his ruined face, that it was all he’d ever ask of her.

He’d never been allowed to speak to her, before the end, and she never asked for any visitors. She’d been proud to the end Tyrion told him afterward, and Jaime looks at his son and wonders how things might have been different if he’d arrived sooner.

Could he have done it if he’d reached the throne room before Snow’s men, Jaime wondered from time to time, could have driven his sword through her heart as he had Aerys’, one life—two—in exchange for the hundreds of lives outside the Red Keep’s walls.

(He couldn’t now, having held Arthur in his arms, couldn’t sacrifice him for all the gold in the land or for a fleet of dragons. Jaime could almost understand his sister’s madness, thought he might watch the world burn if it meant keeping his son.)

“I’ve never asked you to save me, Ser Jaime.” Brienne said.

“And you never would.” He said, both of them knowing it for the truth that it was. “You are honorable. And brave. And true. A better knight than I ever was. And I’ve done little in my life to make amends for my wrongs and still you’ve found me worthy of your kindness.” Jaime’s mouth twitched, he wanted to smile for her, but he couldn’t force it, not when he felt as though his heart were a cold stone lodged in his throat.

“It isn’t kindness that moves me.” Brienne spoke before it felt as though the quiet around them would smother them both. “Jaime.” She said, and her hand settled on his wooden hand, her grip tight enough to jostle the fastenings. “I will only ask you once more and know that whatever answer you give—I will never hold it against you. But know that if you agree—”

Eloquence was not a natural thing for the Maid of Tarth, and Jaime covered her hand with his own, his fingers shaking as he entangled his and hers together.

She had already given him a place at her hearth, the meat and mead of her table.

“I will shield your back,” he said, his voice strangled with the force of his emotions and Brienne’s eyes shone in the firelight, her thin mouth trembled, “and keep your counsel, and give my life for yours if need be.” He swallowed and found he could not swear by the gods, not the old or the new, squeezed her hand tighter still and said instead, “I swear it on my son.”

Brienne rose from her seat and knelt and it was all wrong, all out of order, but her free hand cradled his face, tender as though Jaime were something easily broken.

“I will ask no service of you that might bring you dishonor.” She swore, and Jaime wept, unashamed and unrestrained, to know that she meant it.

-

Jaime was sure that once the joy of seeing their heir returned to them had waned the people of Tarth would care more about the manner and company in which she returned. But whatever rejection he awaited never came, not from the people and not from Brienne.

Within their first moon on the island, the sight of Brienne in his rooms, rocking Arthur’s cradle or else holding the boy himself, mumbling some nonsense or other, became familiar.

He had not asked her to be a mother to his son, it hadn’t seemed fair considering how leaving her behind in Winterfell had hurt her. But Brienne never hesitated after those first tentative days. The first time Jaime woke in the middle of the night to find her shushing the boy in a gentle tone he thought he was dreaming, but the dream had neither faded no blurred and she’d slipped back into bed and assured him Arthur was fine, and Jaime had slipped back to sleep sure the Stranger would come for him soon. He could not keep this for long.

They were both of them learning the gentleness a child required to prosper but there were maesters aplenty around them, from Genny the wetnurse to the maids who’d tended Brienne and her siblings as they grew.

Jaime never asked Brienne to be a mother but that never stopped her from sitting Arthur on her lap in order to feed him the first ripe strawberries of the season or walking with him about the townfolk as he grew older, still a slight child—particularly in her strong arms—but with bright clever eyes that reminded Jaime of Tyrion when he was younger.

He was prone to earaches and fevers, and Jaime feared time and again Arthur would not live out his first year.

Brienne never tried to assure him by telling him there could be others, instead worrying at Jaime’s side waiting for a fever to break. She lacked a nightingale’s voice but she did her best to sing when Arthur cried, though all she seemed to know were half-bawdy camp songs that had no place in nursery.

Arthur grew there, on Tarth, more a fish than a lion. Jaime was sure the boy would know to swim and cast a line before he did to walk and Brienne laughed, promised she would teach him swordwork before he learned his letters if she could have her way.   

Jaime let her have her way more than once that night, overcome with love and gratitude and an all encompassing joy he’d never known before, burning hotter than dragon fire, sharper than steel.

-

Arthur was almost eight moons old when Brienne and Jaime stood before the septon and swore their oaths in public. Arthur chewed on his fist in Selwyn’s arms while Jaime draped a crimson cloak over Brienne’s shoulders. It was nonsensical tradition, for the bridegroom had been taken into his lady’s house, and he would take her name too if it were offered to him. He would strike the name Lannister from the face of the earth if he could, it had been a curse for too long.

Tarth, he’d learned in his time there, was an odd place. It would have to be to grow a knight of Brienne’s caliber and to open it’s arms to an honorless man such as him.

The Red Keep would have been set aflame with gossip if the bride had approached the alter in breeches, no matter how fine their quality, never mind the curve of her belly, already rounding out like a filling moon, visible under the cut of her tunic.

-

The girl was born on a midsummer’s day. She was a hardy babe, taken after her mother’s stock, wailing from the moment she entered the world, calling out to one and all that she’d arrived.

It was the first time Jaime had ever been in a birthing chamber. It had always been women’s terrain, but Brienne had asked for him near the end, when the pain was the worst, and Jaime would have drawn his sword on any who would try to stop him, though no one did.  

He’d watched, amazed as Brienne sunk to all fours and refused to be moved, moaning and panting like a fighter groaned during the full heat of battle, rocking her hips from side to side to try and find her bearings. If the Stranger had tried to enter that birthing room that day, Brienne would have scared him away with her roar, her scarred face flushed red as a ruby. Jaime had helped the midwives lift the deadweight of his wife from the fur strewn floor to the bed, slid behind her as he was ordered by a woman who’d seen more winters than the Lord of Tarth himself, and held her through the final struggle.

She’d collapsed afterward, slumped backward with exhaustion so great Jaime thought she’d been more alive after fighting the dead.

“A daughter, my lady.” The midwife said, laying the squirming purple thing on Brienne’s naked belly, and Jaime watched her, crying and wiggling, already demanding attention.

Brienne placed a shaking hand across the girl’s heaving back, her own hand so large it could cover the whole of their daughter easily.

“Cat.” Brienne said, and Jaime nodded, though it wasn’t a question at all. She could say the child’s name was Renly and Jaime would bow to her will.

For so long he’d thought of love as a jealous thing, finite and narrow. It had always seemed so before, that to share it would diminish it, make its value less.

But there was nothing that could diminish the love he felt for Brienne, nothing that could detract from the love he bore his son. And he knew, staring at the form of their daughter newly born into the world, that he would have more than love enough to offer her.

The midwives took Cat and another woman saw to Brienne for the labor was not over yet, and Jaime was sent forth from the room to fetch food and hot wine, returned to find the babe bathed and Brienne sleeping, the bloodied sheets taken away.

He sat at her bedside a long time, held her hand for a while, and thanked her, silently and aloud, for all that she’d ever given him.

-

“Mind your sister!” Brienne called out, watching Arthur and Catelyn playing along the blue shore, their golden heads bent together over whatever it was they’d found washed into a tide pool.

Arthur looked up at his mother’s cry, eight years old now and able to mimic the gravity of her bearings. He was still small for his age, his sister nearly his height, but his eyes had never lost their cleverness. Jaime watched as Arthur took a hold of his sister’s hand, and the two of them crouched closer to the ground, the wind wiping their golden hair about their heads.

Brienne caught his eye. “Make sure they don’t try to bring another fish home.”

They had fish enough already. And there wasn’t a kitchen cat or field dog that didn’t follow the lordling and lady of Tarth for a scrap of food. His children had both inherited their mother’s bleeding heart it seemed and they were determined to befriend and shelter every last animal they came across.

(Someone had told Catelyn about the King’s direwolf and she’d become determined to find a wolf in the wild to call her own, though Brienne had tired to explain that wolves were not common on the island.)

“Look, an Evenstar!” Catelyn said when she saw Jaime close, and Jaime peered over her narrow shoulder into the pool waters, saw the rippling arms of a five pointed starfish. “We should take it to grandfather.”

Arthur looked ready to reach into the pool and cradle the poor beast in the palms of his hands, but Jaime hoisted his daughter into his arms, laughed heartily at her squeal. “Your grandfather has stars enough.” He said, fitting his right forearm beneath Cat’s bottom to support her weight. He reached his left hand to Arthur, and his son took hold, one last lingering look at the tide pool and its treasure.

He released Jaime’s hand only once they were close enough for him to take Brienne’s and she smiled at him, pushing his golden hair off his forehead.

“Ready to go home, dear heart?” she asked, and Arthur nodded.

Jaime held Catelyn close and followed them both home.


End file.
